the BLOG

I enjoyed this performance very much. But in order to make myself blogworthy beyond the previous sentence, I've latched onto a thesis. So, allow me to bleat this sweeping generalization in reference to five of the six pieces performed in Saturday night's Icebreaker IV: The American Future (Classics of Downtown): The Music of the Future inherently features an interface between instruments of acoustic design and those of electrically based technology.

What an amazing array of talent was on stage Saturday night at On the Boards, and what a great variety of music composition they presented.

The first thing that has to be praised is the talent and energy of the Seattle Chamber Players. They played their butts off, and did it with such precision and such verve, through one complicated piece after another. And this was the team's second such night in a row!

As the opening to her program message, Elena Dubinets writes, "SCP is committed to supporting the composition and performance of music that elucidates and celebrates, shouts and protests, meditates and contemplates, music written by composers seeking a way to reflect articulately upon these complicated times." The Alex Ross curated program of "Icebreaker IV" certainly meditates and contemplates.

I miss the days of new music festivals in Seattle. In the early 1990s, composer Robert Priest produced Marzena, a Festival of Contemporary Music that brought composers such as Toru Takemitsu and R. Murray Schafer to the Northwest. Performances took place in venues that ranged from traditional concert halls to unique places where the audience was encouraged to bring sleeping bags and pillows to listen to music while in repose. Along with well-known contemporary composers, there were over two dozen other composers from all over the world who would converge in Seattle as part of Marzena.

Radiohole's Fluke was created from an improvisation activity the cast called Bible-Ear, in which a performer is expected to simultaneously listen to and recite back the recorded book playing in his headphones while holding a conversation with a person who is unable to hear the recording. The result in this case is the wild, physically rigorous and darkly hilarious riff on Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

How do you tell the epic story of that white whale in under an hour and a half with three people and a naked bearded guy on a television? You don't.